


Memento mori

by hellabaloo



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Drabble, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 05:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellabaloo/pseuds/hellabaloo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ori learns his letters early.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento mori

**Author's Note:**

> I blame this completely on the gifset winding its way around tumblr that induces immediate and ugly sobbing on my part. If you're new to the Tolkien canon, and don't know about Ori's brief appearance in The Lord of the Rings, I suppose this is spoilery. Liberties have been taken with the epitaph for simplicity's sake.

Ori learns his letters early. He has a head for memorization and calculation such that one day when he's still quite young and wanders away from Nori who'd been assigned by their father to watch him, he doesn't understand what all the fuss is about.

"You could've gotten so lost in the mines!" his family all tell him.

He tries to explain, that no, of course he wouldn't have gotten lost because he's got a map of the Mountain stored up in his head that he knew exactly where he was, even if his family didn't. He tries to tell them, but they don't listen.

"You're still too young to be wandering about on your own," his mother says, dabbing the tears away from her beard. "I want you to always be near Dori, do you understand?"

So following Dori from lesson to lesson, Ori picks up the sharp angular letters of Khuzdûl quickly enough and he starts to slip his brothers little messages, folded scraps of paper tucked into pockets, sleeves, between their tools, and even sometimes in their boots. But it's not until Ori passes by a stonemason tap tapping the barest flakes of stone away at a time, slowly shaping what would be a single pen-stroke in the span of an entire afternoon that Ori thinks letters are beautiful. 

There is a sharpness and strength that stone lends to the letters as he carves them. A permanence that will last beyond the time when any paper has since crumbled into dust. He thinks he's never crafted anything so fine as Balin's tomb in Moria, and he is certain it will outlast their small party by many long years. He never gives his hope a voice, but it in a small, secret corner of his heart, Ori wishes that when any who can read the lovingly crafted, if simple, epitaph that they marvel not at his skill but at the rightness of the words.

_Here Lies Balin_  
 _Son of Fundin_  
 _Lord of Moria_


End file.
